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Robot builders seek a little help from sci-fi

By Tom Simonite

Could WALL-E’s animators teach engineers how to help people connect with machines?

(Image: Pixar)

“It’s surprising how often people make nervous jokes about robots taking over the world. I don’t want to make too much of that, but I think there’s something there.” So says one roboticist who thinks finding out exactly how fictional robots influence people can help engineers build real ones.

“Most people have never seen a robot before,” Smart told New Scientist. “Their experiences – such as they are – all come from movies or literature.”

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That affects the way people react to real robots, he says.

“People have a theory in their head about how something will behave, and if a robot doesn’t fit with that theory, people get nervous,” he explains. “It’s like standing next to the twitchy guy at the bus stop. He goes against your expectations and you get worried.”

Great expectations

“People that thought of it as a camera with legs were really pleased, but people that thought of it as a photographer were really disappointed,” he says.

Smart thinks those raised expectations were down to the impact of unrealistically human-like robots in movies and books. “People don’t really know what they are. C-3PO in Star Wars is very humanlike, intelligent and capable, but real robots are not like that at all.”

Instead of just forcing people to alter their expectations, Smart thinks it makes sense to study how people’s ideas about robots are influenced by fiction. That knowledge could be used to design robots that make the most of those expectations.

“My real concern is to get people and robots to play together nicely,” says Smart.

Work in progress

The workshop was an attempt to start a discussion among roboticists about those ideas. “We hope to have future meetings and are working towards designing experiments,” says Smart.

Noel Sharkey, a roboticist at Sheffield University, is currently researching the history of robotics and uncovered evidence of simple robots in ancient Greece. Robots have appeared in fiction as far back as that too, he says.

“All robot researchers have experienced the way that people’s behaviour towards robots is influenced by their experiences with science fiction,” he says. Attempting to come up with robot design ideas based on studying that sci-fi influence is an interesting idea, says Sharkey. “But this is an early stage discussion – who knows if this will develop into a more substantial field.”

Robot dreams

“It would be worthwhile to study the way computer animators make us connect with simple, non-human objects.” Pixar’s WALL-E, for example, is easy to connect with, he says.

There are precedents for roboticists working with Hollywood, he points out. The expressive eyes of the ground-breaking MIT robot Kismet, with a face designed to express emotions, came from a Hollywood effects company.

Robots – Learn more about the robotics revolution in our continually updated special report.